The human resources (HR) function has evolved significantly over the past several decades. It has grown in maturity and influence while simultaneously enduring great criticism from employees and managers. Meanwhile, environmental pressures have forced business leaders and academics to call for...

The concept of this thesis emerged from my own experience of mergers and acquisitions in which I had been involved over the past 20 years. Companies make acquisitions, mergers, or joint ventures for technology or geographical reasons, or to consolidate a market. The companies have to find a way...

The ability to innovate sits at the heart of an organization's ability to succeed in a competitive environment. An organization can innovate by improving existing products, services, or processes or by generating new products, services, or processes. Achieving successful, repeated organizational...

I propose the creation of a real-time compliance "bot" - software to momentarily pause each employee's email at the moment of sending and to electronically assess whether that email is likely to create liability or unanticipated expense for the corporation. My thesis describes the confluence of...

This thesis is about the effects of changing customer preferences on the United States Postal Service's retail network and offers a process for wider adoption of its current retail partnership program. The Contract Postal Unit (CPU) program represents 10 percent of the Postal Service's current...

The United States cable television industry is experiencing fierce competition from telephone companies and content providers, as well as new and possibly unknown entrants. As organizations in the industry are currently dealing with competitor firms' ability to enter the domains of media,...

In this thesis, I argue that accelerating government research and development (R&D) with private financing could simultaneously improve the nation's war fighting readiness and economy. I submit that better utilization of United States Department of Defense (DoD) laboratories through alternative...

This study examines the effect of financial reporting quality on risk shifting, an investment distortion that is caused by shareholders' incentives to engage in high-risk projects that are detrimental to debt holders. I use asymmetric timeliness to proxy for a dimension of accounting quality...

I study the evolution of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard (SFAS) # 142, which uses unverifiable fair-value estimates to account for acquired goodwill. I find evidence consistent with the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issuing SFAS 142 in response to political pressure over...

Hybrid organizations combine institutional logics, often in a search for novel solutions to complex problems such as climate change. This dissertation explores the conditions under which hybrid organizations are effective in realizing such solutions, along with the processes that strengthen or...